Bill and Duke: Birds of a Different Feather
by Dock Hollerday
Summary: With elements of Winnie the Pooh and other classic children's books, this is the woeful tale of a flock of geese lost in winter and what they do about it. See if you can spot references to E.B. White's Trumpet of the Swan, Ducktails by Janette Oke, Watership Down, Where the Red Fern Grows, Peanuts, and anything else that seems reminiscent of anything.


Once a pond a thyme a gaggle of geese landed mistakenly in a patch of that famously little known garden of Grandma Oglethorpe's: "Hidden Lake Variety Herbs," also known to some as Hodgefart's Last Abandem (but those people are pretty much died out now and don't come around very often anymore). It was one of those blustery days like from the Hundred Acre Woodland but there didn't appear to be any honey colored bears mucking about in undersized rouge t-shirts, so the geese shrugged and began foraging. Duke, the alpha gander and his sidekick Bill-who was really a misplaced drake v-dodger from a lost tribe of mallards-told everyone to replenish their energy reserves while they figured out what went wrong. The two birds waddled off a safe distance where they could discuss things privately.

"I told you we should have gone south by southwest-west at that red barn an hour ago," said Bill, sounding nasal as usual.

"Really?" said Duke, straightening up and looking all around them at the sky. Ever since his unfortunate accident the previous spring involving a plate glass window at a music store in which he had been mistaken for a trumpeter swan searching for a trumpet to steal, of all things, and then banged about the head with everything from a bass drum mallet to a clarinet case until he'd lost all sense of direction and barely escaped with this life, he now trusted his mallard navigator like his own right wing. "I thought you said 'south by southwest _pest'_."

"That doesn't even make sense," quacked the duck. "Why would I ever say 'pest'? We were talking about directions!"

"No, no," clucked the gander, "you kept inhaling mosquitoes and coughing the word 'pest'. I distinctly heard you say it at least a dozen times today. You do it every time we go anywhere."

"I do not!" scoffed the duck, looking offended. But his feathered face couldn't reveal the self doubt he was actually feeling.

"At any rate," said Duke, offering his friend an out on the blame-game, "how far off course you reckon we've come?"

"About a hundred miles!"

They stared at each other for a while, both sensing the winter chill prickling at their joints. It was a fleeting feeling like one gets when one senses a foreboding of gloom in the dark recesses of one's mind and then it passes into sunshine and pleasantness and is comfortably forgotten. But a web-footed bird's mind is kind of crammed into a narrow, stream-lined little skull area, so they don't usually notice foreboding except through their joints, and joints carry an extra urgency of memory vibe which the mind alone can never quite achieve to keep a body alert to possibilities. Both birds blinked and then kept staring at each other for a while longer.

"Did you feel that?" asked Duke.

"Danger, brrr, I did."

"I suppose we'd better get the flock out of here," said Duke.

"Danger-tootin' right."

They waddled back to the other geese.

"Uh," said Duke, raising his voice. "Uh, I don't know quite how to quack this. _Endanger it, Bill! Now you're idiolect is infecting my elegant speech!_ Uh, I don't want anyone to become alarmed, but I think we might have a bit of a problem."

"What happened," said an older gander who usually incited problems among the flock every time the new generation of leadership seemed to falter an instant. "What, are we lost or somethin', young fella? Did ya get us all lost out here?"

"No," said Duke.

"I always predicted you'd get us all lost out here or somethin', didn't I? That's right. I told Ma, I told her, 'That young gosling'll get us all lost one day and then you'll see, and don't say I didn't warn ya. That's what I told 'er, unh-hunh, and I told all of you, too! I warned all of you goslings this would happen, but would you listen to me? No. Now you'll be sorry."

"Yeah, well Ma is gone," said Duke, glaring intently at his assailant, "and so is the rest of your generation, old gand. I can't understand why you yourself are still around to get under my feathers, but to answer your question, no. I know exactly where we are."

"Oh? Where are we, then, pray tell?" The old gander straightened up the best he could and rallied the other geese with brief moments of eye-contact. "Listen up, everyone. Mr. Thinks-he-knows-everything is gonna say something really important, now. Now that he's got us all lost out here and under his power."

The other geese looked from the old gander to Duke. Some of them shuffled impatiently on webbed feet. There were some indistinct murmurings throughout the flock.

Duke nervously glanced at Bill who casually looked the other way and hummed a little tune that he'd make up earlier. It was a good, catchy little tune the duck had come up with during their long flights together and Duke couldn't have known but he had also secretly been working out some lyrics to it, but so far was unwilling to sing them for anyone because they seemed too non-sensical.


End file.
